The Sphinx

Guides&Cie(fr)

Established in 1821, the Compagnie des Guides de Chamonix is the first and largest guides' company in the world. Wiser for its historical organisation, this diverse community of self-employed professionals operates according to two rock-solid pillars: an in-turn work distribution and an emergency fund to support guides injured from work. Who are these women and men who have sworn allegiance to their passion for the mountains? How do they cope with the hazards that are inherent to their occupation? In other words, what does "being a guide" mean in 21st century, and what makes it so remarkable? Thanks to its numerous moving accounts, this films draws a warm portrait of the guides and takes the audience deep into a very unordinary group of professionals. Undoubtedly a sensitive documentary served with stunning images!

Grimpeurs(it)

In 1961 the southern face of the Central Pillar of Mont Blanc was still unclimbed. Two roped parties of climbers decided to come together to attempt to open a new route. Four days of violent storms caught the climbers just 80 metres from the summit. Of the seven climbers, only three returned home. One of the most intense and dramatic events in the history of climbing relives on the big screen, thanks to accounts and images of the feat.

Fine Lines(en)

For nearly three years, director Dina Khreino interviewed world-class mountain climbing athletes, listening to what compels them to leave behind families, friends, and everyday comforts to risk everything for a fleeting glimpse into the unknown. What she found was a tribe, a diverse group of professional adventurers and amateur philosophers forged by the ultimate test of body, mind, and spirit. In the face of shifting winds, sheer granite cliffs, and impossible odds, they climb. Each for their own reason, but every one connected by the vertical world. In this rarefied air, these athletes are fundamentally changed, not just as climbers, but as human beings.

Generation Dry(fr)

It is a fact that our winters are less and less cold. Therefore it is harder and harder to get the conditions for ice-climbing. Fortunately, man adapts to his environment and makes progress: this is how dry-tooling was born. This movie will make you discover this discipline: its history, its evolution and the current practice. You will also see how much excitement dry tooling can bring. Dry-tooling now allows to free-climb some routes which were impossible to climb without aid in the past.

First in Line(fr)

A screen adaptation of the well-known novel by Roger Frison-Roche about the harsh lives of mountain guides and their families in the French Alps, near Chamonix and the French/Swiss/Italian borders... Like his father, Zian Servettaz is a dedicated mountain man. His Italian-born wife Bianca does not adjust well to his mountain village in France, and to the ever life-threatening dangers presented by his mountain guiding and climbing. She briefly returns to Italy and to her family. However, after Zian's insistence and trip to Italy, she returns to mountain life in the French Alps. Once back there, events will unfold, changing their lives as well as those of other mountain people forever.

Touching the Void(en)

The true story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates' disastrous and nearly-fatal mountain climb of 6,344m Siula Grande in the Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes in 1985.

Dying for Everest(en)

On 15 May, 2006, double amputee Mark Inglis reached the summit of Mt Everest. It was a remarkable achievement and Inglis was feted by press and public alike. But only a few days later he was plunged into a storm of controversy when it was learned that he had passed an incapacitated climber, Englishman David Sharp, leaving him to a lonely end high in the Death Zone.

Stars at Noon(fr)

Les Etoiles de Midi is an engaging docudrama about some of the more spectacular exploits of French mountain climbers over the last several decades. In one re-enacted story, there is a wartime escape through the mountains, and in another, a daring rescue of a pair of climbers who had been missing. The actors themselves are adept at the sport of climbing, and they give the scenes an immediacy and real daring that brings the stories alive. A combination of their acrobatics and skill and the outstanding episodes in the history of French climbing creates a winning 78 minutes.

Rock Queen(en)

Catherine Destivelle has deservedly become the most famous female climber in the world. She rose to prominence with historic climbs, such as the free ascent of the Nameless Tower in Pakistan, and solo winter ascents of the classic north faces of the Matterhorn and the Eiger, climbs that have never been repeated by any woman. She also made history in sport climbing by winning the world championship title. In 1997, this time in Scotland, on the iconic Old Man of Hoy route, opened by Bonington, Patey & Baillie, Martin Belderson crowned Destivelle Queen of the Rock. She was four months pregnant when she made this 137-meter ascent, which was not difficult but on tricky rock.

Insostenibile(it)

Anatomy of a First(fr)

In February 1966, Pierre Mazeaud and Lucien Berardini traveled to the Atakor massif, in the Hoggar mountain range of the Sahara in southern Algeria. There, they attempted a challenging first ascent: the Takouba spur, one of the peaks adjacent to Garet El Djenoun, a legendary mountain in the Hoggar massif, first climbed by Roger Frison-Roche and Raymond Coche in 1935. The documentary, superbly filmed by Jacques Ertaud, won the Grand Prize at the Trento International Mountain Film Festival in 1966.

Nanda Devi(fr)

In 1975, Raymond Renaud, Yves Pollet-Villard, Maurice Gicquel, Maurice Cretton, Jean Coudray, Yvon Masino, Walter Cecchinel, all teacher guides at ENSA in Chamonix, with the help of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, set out to cross the 2 peaks of the highest mountain in India. After 43 hours in a truck, 10 days of slow and difficult approach walking, helped by goats for the portage due to lack of sherpas, the base camp is set up on the Nanda Devi glacier. Two groups share the two eastern and western slopes, 3 kilometers separate them: the goal being to meet between the two summits by the ridge. But on the big day, with the monsoon, bad weather arrives with wind and snow, we will have to give up. Like the French expedition of 1951 which lost two mountaineers, Roger Duplat and Gilbert Vigne, to whom Paul Gendre and Louis Dubosc pay tribute.

Annapurna III - Unclimbed(de)

“Annapurna III – Unclimbed” is an award-winning 12-min documentary featuring the 2016 expedition to the Himalayas of Nepal led by David Lama together with Austrian alpinists Hansjörg Auer and Alex Blümel. Join the team in their feelings of fatigue, anxiety, exposure and ordeal during their 5 weeks attempting one of the world’s greatest, unsolved puzzles of alpinism: The unclimbed south-east ridge of Annapurna III.

Sadpara The Mountaineer(ur)

7 Tage im September(de)

7 DAYS IN SEPTEMBER is the adventurous story of two exceptional mountaineers, Benedikt Böhm and his partner Sebastian Haag, trying to set a world record speed ascent to the 8,163-m peak of Manaslu in the Himalayas. It's a story of friendship and rivalry, and of their desire to risk everything, including family responsibilities. 7 DAYS IN SEPTEMBER also tells the tale of those who set out with the same vision, like mountaineer legends Silvio Mondinelli or Rémy Lécluse, but whose lives changed forever in a fatal avalanche catastrophe. The film is a personal exploration of one of the most tragic dramas in Himalayan mountaineering history. What drives people to risk their lives like this again and again? What does it mean for the bereaved to love a person whose passion seems to be contrary to all rationality?

The Mountain Within Me(en)

After suffering a catastrophic and almost fatal spinal cord injury, professional rugby player Ed Jackson's world changed forever. Follows Ed's journey on his recovery as he achieves the mental and physical heights of Snowdonia, the Alps and Himalayas to the life-altering challenges closer to home.

Dhaulagiri(en)

Esteban ‘Topo’ Mena is an Ecuadorian mountain guide and rising star in alpine climbing whose dream is to climb the first ascent of a new route on Mount Everest. He teams up with Cory Richards, a National Geographic photographer and the first American to climb an 8,000-meter peak in winter, and they attempt a never-before-tried climb on the north face of Everest. Though they fail on their first attempt, they vow to return the following season. However, due to the global pandemic, the North side of Everest remains closed, so the ambitious duo turns their attention to a futuristic new route on Dhaulagiri, the seventh highest mountain in the world. When the risk of death on Dhaulagiri stresses the team to a breaking point, the climbers are forced to confront the question of why they climb—and why it’s all worth it.

Edlinger, la liberté au bout des doigts(fr)

In the 1980s, Patrick Edlinger, nicknamed "Le Blond", painted with the grace of a poet the first chapter in the world history of free climbing. In his hands, marginal exercise has become a real lifestyle, carrying a message of freedom. His famous solos, beyond the proven feat they represent, bear witness to this. Life at Your Fingertips, the first internationally known climbing film, touched and inspired by generations of climbers; Edlinger was one of the meteors that shone light on the cliffs of the world by following the trajectory of a single idea: to be free to live only by "climbing". Yet the man capable of concessions in the face of the necessities of life (competitions, advertisements) and pressure from the media, his public and the desires he aroused.

Bravo Marcel(fr)

Patrick Gabarrou, Pèlerin des cimes(fr)